It looks like the saga to get the VLC media player to launch for Windows Phone continues as developers are continuing to experience setbacks that postpone the launch. On a bit of good news, Thomas Nigro announced that the version for Windows 8.1 is almost ready so the wait won't be too much longer for desktop, laptop, and tablet owners.

The version for Windows 8.1 will come with a more responsive UI and new design, according to a tweet from Nigro, asking users to "please be patient, we are working hard to bring the best experience possible."

Nigro continues on Twitter saying that there are "still some things to fix. We've got delay on WP. We prefer to ship a good version instead of a boggy one."

Which brings up another point...im tired of not being able to back apps up to my computer that I PAID FOR. This is crap. I pay for them, they pull them, and I need to spend an hour on the phone getting a refund. LET ME BACK UP WHAT I OWN ALREADY, FOR CHRIST SAKE.

It does get frustrating, the back up system is not as robust as it should be... There was a nifty invoicing app that got pulled, made working on the go so much easier. But after a hard reset, I lost it - paid £4.99 for it too. We definitely need a decent PC / tablet app to back up the entire phone. Think I'm going to search on uservoice for WP, if its been posted or not and in the event of latter - post it myself.

Moli also has a free version and does incredible streaming service. Yes the ui is not good looking, but at least it's powerful and AVAILABLE now. I'm tired of VLC's promise of bringing it SOON to windows since 2012 and still after TWO years, my surface had no good media player. I have no more trust for VLC, that's it

I hope you're joking because I fail to see what's racist about the cone either. If you're implying it's racist because it's white, then what do you want, that every white product in this world be banned? How ridiculous.

Elias, I have no idea whether rodneyej's joking or not (as my first sentence above shows). On the internet without any emoticons or obvious hints one can't really tell when someone is joking or being sarcastic or serious. And why are you so "booty hurt" (as you so eloquently put it) about what I said to him anyway? Let him speak for himself and clarify his intentions if he cares to.

lol this is the best falsely-racist discussion I've ever read. You know what I'm amazed by? Nobody's yelling nor taking this seriously. This is a rare thing.
Maybe the end of racism is not that far after all...

@Thomas Nigro: I thought you were French, isn't the whole VLC project team French as well? Keep up the good work anyway, thank you :-)

You racists are so ignorant!!! I said that I am NOT clear and I told you that was disrespectful. Well, Adolf I'll have you know that we don't all look alike. There are translucents, transparents(ooh la la!), crystals, opaques, pearls, etc. And I am absolutely happy in my skin. I'm never gonna be the sapphire dream you see on tv but I LOVE my haze and if you don't share the same opinion and adoration for my people as I do, then you're damn right you're racist as hell! Now good day sir!!

No , It's just that they hire 10 people to make the iOS/Android app because they want to release it as soon as possible. But there is only one developer behind the WP Version , and i'm pretty sure he is not working full time on this project , he should have other projects too. So , all these delays are the consequence of the lack of interest for the WP app. They are not in a hurry to release it. If it was the iOS or Android app , they would have a whole team of developers working 12h/24 , 7d/7 on the app ...

I'm telling you this because i'm a WP/.NET software engineer. Java (Android) and C#(WP) are almost similar. And the WP SDK and Android SDK/ADT are pretty much the same. So , there shouldn't more than 5/10% time difference between 2 similar projects on WP/Android ( sometimes , it's even faster on WP )

Sorry AymanWP93, but you are dead wrong here. This might make sense on new development, but this is VLC which has a common code base with as little platform specific code as possible. Since WinRT prevents direct access to some things, they have to target much of the core to make it work. Once compete, the entire code base will be improved and new versions will build easily, but taking current code and building for WinRT is not remotely trivial.

It does have a 'common code base', but as for that base being OS agnostic is WRONG and why it is a nightmare to port outside of its bubble.

There is a LOT of OSS software that use *nix libraries and wrappers instead of PROPERLY developing the software for crossplatform. It is an easy 'cheat' that has worked in the past, but even then has left the Windows version of the software LACKING, even if the end user never sees the problem.

One example of code we worked with a couple of years ago used some of the more common *nix wrappers to compile and run on Windows. However, when we broke the code and the wrappers apart it was sometimes doing 10 things redundantly that wasn't even necessary on Windows. So instead of just a simple open FS stream, it was making several *nix based calls to ensure the FS and stream were what it wanted, and yet on Windows the API that was being used was ALREADY doing this.

This creates code bloat and also makes the OSS variations of Windows software perform poorly when they are depending on using these types of generic wrappers/libraries instead of dealing with the OS specific APIs as they should.

VLC is still trying to dig itself out of the 'common' wrappers that it was built with, and sadly the wrappers are rather crap and *nix focused. So when moving over to even native code with 'restrictions' like in WinRT, all the shortcuts from the wrappers/libraries have to be recreated, making it a mess, and destroying the 'portability' of the project.

This also isn't just a 'when moving to Windows or WinRT' problem, it is a problem of putting faith in a bad way to develop cross platform software. There is so much technology and so many features that allow developers to move away from the lower level architectures, and in the year 2014, binding to any architecture is just insane.

The thing is we're having problems with the ARM compiler. That's the reason of the delay on WP side.

W8.1 version is quite ready, and I think you'll like it. I worked these two last month with a lot of people asking them for feedback, trying to make the app as responsive as possible, and trust me, I'll be relieved when the update will be available for all of you.

I should have invested the money in share market than spending the money for this Project KickStarter.......Still Kicking with the ARM compilers.....which the issue persisting ....and......and.........!!!!!!!!
What's the problem Thomas ?
Users out here can suggest a way...Is it with the Codes...

The VLC team are not the best when it comes to developing. Even now, the normal VLC version for Windows contains loads of bugs. The WP version was supposed to be out ages ago, but they just can't seem to get to grips with it. I don't expect the 8.1 version for Windows to be any better....

I don't really care cause I spent some money on MoliPlayer Pro, which is awesome. Only thing it lacks is the ability to open a video from any folder, which I hope they'll add if it hasn't been added already xD haven't used it for the last couple of weeks xD

I do even better by downloading a .xap file via laptop and then transfer it to SD card so by that I redownload it as many times as I want by actual just using about 20 kb and just after a second It starts installation

Nigro nigro nigro nigro. SEE, it's just a word! It doesn't have to mean anything! Well I could bitch about it about meaning jack shit but that would make me a hypocrite I guess since I just wrote comment about it.

At least they are reporting that the app is delayed cause they want a good version with no or minor bugs, lets just wait a little longer. When was the last time anyone heard from flipboard developers in guessing that all died.

It seems like there is some serious problem with APIs of media players on WP which also accounts for XBox Video and Music slumps. I'm no coder though so don't take me too seriously.
It's good that developers are taking time instead of pushing half baked efforts.

All you people moaning, where are the status updates for high profile apps like instagram and twitter? Vlc is obviously a bigger task than anticipated, no doubt due to the same reasons apps on RT and WP are poor shadows of their cousins on ios and android, i.e. crap. So lets give the dev kudos for at least sticking at it and providing updates, compared to companies like Kik and shazam who have actually stopped supporting the platform.

Totally agree with you dude stop c cramping VLC that instagram shit has been rotting in the store without an update since good knows when.... Thomas is one developer .... Facebook is a multi dollar company and they don't spare a single developer towards us... Fuck you Facebook

Don't mention it again until its ready. There's nothing more annoying than news about a project that is still being worked on with no actual release date or update at all.
Its like saying "remember that thing that was going to happen, well it still is. NEWS!"

A major hurdle for us is to take VLC for Windows 8 and get it to run on ARM based Windows RT devices. This is because there is currently no stable toolchain available that supports all the features we need in order to cross-compile the libVLC library for Windows RT. While Microsoft provides its default development environment, it is not of much help to us at the lower libVLC level, which uses advanced features of the C language as well as custom, hand written assembly code. Both of these are incompatible with Visual Studio, so we will be required to adapt a mingw-w64 derivative for this purpose. This is feasible, since this is what we used for the past 10 years to provide VLC on Windows, but it will take time.

A major benefit of this subproject will be a working mingw-w64 environment for all the other projects with their roots in the UNIX/Linux world."

So as you can see, this project is huge (and time consuming) but this work will open the door for other apps that are based on code dervied from Unix land with open Win libraries to get built into new apps.

The challenge has been the desire (and need) for them to re-use their own code.

If they make it, it will be due to a massive amount of work and people should be very impressed by their achievement.

You have 0 comprehension on what is involved. If they pull this off, it will be an achivement. This isn't an app, they are having to re-develop an entire dev toolset.

They also have communicated in other, larger, lengthy posts their project status. It will see the light of day, and as I say it will pave the way ( as the post clearly says) or other projects using those compiler and dev tools/libs to port to WP or ARM RT if they want. Its more than an app project.

So there is no "nope" about it, you are basically arguing against fact. Like someone telling you gravity exists and you just say "nope". Sorry mate, but thems the facts.

Im not debating your money or whether they have delivered, simply that what they have undertaken is a bit of a monster project and if they succeed it _will_ be an achivement.

I disagree. They've had a very long time. I pay attention, and I've only seen 5 or 6 updates about this. Its super dodgy. They took money. They haven't delivered anything. No one wanted or cared about a Metro app that was only good for x86. X86 machines can get the desktop program. Its RT and WP that need it so badly, and they've screwed us.

Your post shows exaclty why people like you shouldn't be allowed on the Internet.
You have ZERO understanding of what a Universal app is.

You have ZERO understanding of the difference between a toolset and an app.

You have ZERO understanding of how long any of the above takes.

Go to GITHUB right now, and look at the commits. See the code. Read the changes. There is work there.

Mate, honestly, I don't wish to be mean, but you are like a 5 year old. Whine whine whine. Guess, supposition. Its all hot air mate. VLC has been working on something which is truly hard to do, and has done 90%+ of the work. Hold the hem of your skirt down and VLC will come. It will be an amazing achievement to have ported so much of what they have to a Universal App for Windows (including sub project like ARM versions of libraries). It means VLC will be able to be used on all Windows platforms in the future.

You cannot disagree with me, these are just plain facts of the world mate I am not debating this with you - simply pointing out the facts. If you cannot read or look at a source code reposititory isn't anyone elses problem but yours.

At this point I feel like the VLC guys are just trolling us. We invested in the Kickstarter campaign to get the Windows RT and Windows Phone versions made. They did nothing for like 1.5 years, meanwhile made and released iOS and Android apps that work fine. Then they finally started working on these versions and keep claiming they can't do it? They're talented developers who have made a ton of different versions of their apps, from the desktop version in Windows 7/8 to iOS to Android and so forth. You're telling me they can't figure out Windows 8/RT and Windows Phone? I don't buy it. Rudy could code this shit in a week. I've lost all respect for VLC and have long ago--long ago--switched over to different media players as a result of their lollygagging. I want my Kickstarter money back.

You probably don't know a shit about native code and hand tuned low level assembly code ! Don't you understand what he says, its not about coding but its about compiling the existing code into ARM Architecture !! So they are now basically developing a compiler that compiles some Advanced features of c and hand written assembly code into windows phone supported binaries !! This will bea huge advantage for windows phone and windows ecosystem as a whole! So stop bitching with your Rudy fanboy comments ! With all due respect to Rudy Huynh , please stop these kinds of comments ! This subproject is gonna open the door for many more native code to come to Windows phone ! And when they release windows phone version they are gonna make it universal too !

Give me a break: they clearly took money from Kicstarter employees, sat on it for months while they worked on iOS and Android versions of the software, and have only recently half-heartedly started working on this mess. A coding team that has been able to code their software for multiple platforms (Windows, Max, iOS, Linxu, Android) struggling this much to bring it to Windows 8/RT and WP? All a ruse to cover up the fact that they took our money and used it to focus on iOS and Android instead. And I don't need to know how to "code 1 line of Basic". That's what I pay other people to do.

See I knew it. All your "guesswork" is total balls. We've had a VLC beta, so they obviously have coded large parts of it. You need to stop being a no nothing bell end.

I really can't stand all this childlike whining. VLC will come, but you kids bleet like goats about wanting everything "right now ". waaahahhh carry on crying. Its pathetic.

You so superior as well "thast what I pay other people to do". jerk. You don't have the intellectual ability to comprehend what is going on with VLC, or write 1 line of Basic code. I would be surpirsed if you tie your own shoelaces. Go bore off somewhere else troll. VLC will come, just wait you whiny peasant. What they are doing is way harder than an no nothing like you can possbily comprehend. Its beyong your IQ.

My "guesswork"? There is no guesswork. Look at the timeline of events:

2012 Nov 29: Kickstarter campaign for Windows 8 and RT

2014 Aug 25: still no working version of the Windows 8/RT version.

In the meantime, despite ZERO kickstarter campaigns for iOS, Android, and MacOS version, the VLC team launched--AND UPDATED--versions of VLC for iOS, Android, and MacOS despite the fact that they collected publicly donated money for a Windows 8/RT version nearly two years ago that still isn't here. So don't talk to me about "Guesswork". It's laid out clear as day and the proof is in the pudding. They took our money, sat on it for nearly two years, and instead made and updated versions of their app for 3 different platforms first. That's effed up.

What a stupid thing to say. Did you build every single component of the networked device you are using to post this idiotic message, including all of the componenents of the device itself and the network infrastructure used to transmit the message here? No, you didn't. You paid someone else to. Unless you have personally made every product that you've ever used, you're a hypocrite for criticizing me (and, everyone else in the world, really) for paying for things I don't have time to make by myself. Take a sociology class. It's called the social division of labor. It has nothing to do with IQ and everything to do with efficiency.